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NIT 👉 FreeMann & NIT
In the autumn of 2024, we met at the UP-ON Performance Art Archive. Through the box, we exchanged contact information and began chatting together, discussing the artworks and talking about life. During the winter, we started creating with spray paint. I shared my spray painting graffiti method with Freeman, and suggested that the two spellings, FREEMAAN and FREEMANN, be used as Freeman’s graffiti code name. In street writing, Freeman chose FREEMANN as his graffiti code name. Our collaboration involved dialogic spraying on wooden frame canvas. I first applied NIT Throw-up bubble letters on the canvas, and then FREEMANN covered them on top of me. There were also several rounds where he first used his color and line combinations, and then I used NIT Throw-up to cover his colors and lines. FREEMANN came to my studio, which was located in a container. Due to my perception of "imported items".’, I believed that art, materials, acrylics, graffiti, and hip-hop culture were all imported goods transported by ships from Europe and America. And the container is the carrier for transporting imported items. The container holds symbolic meaning of carrying imported cultures. I shared this feeling with FREEMANN. In my mind, these imported cultures, after our further creation, will become new cultures, new products, forming new awareness and generating new impulses. And living, reading, working and producing in the container, the works created will become "imported items" and drift to America and Europe... At the beginning of 2025, we created graffiti on the containers together. Then we chose to create again on the wooden frame painting board. FREEMANN chose to use acrylic paint and painted the green container base. Then we continued the conversation between him and me about the spray painting. After the Spring Festival, we gathered again. I proposed the idea of covering our first works. It was opposed. I thought our graffiti creation needed an examination and reflection, and FREEMANN had become so obsessed with the hand-cranked automatic spray paint can that he was feeling a sense of sensibility and joy, and told me that his graffiti was very exciting, and could anyone stop him from being excited. I propose the following suggestion: Separate and juxtapose the works we have created. We used partitions made of storage steel frames. The inherent usage marks of the partitions and the sprayed content that we researched and considered were used together in a set of color gradations, while maintaining the form of separation of the images. We also attempted to use this dialogue on the wooden frame canvas again. We all see the self that is approaching from here.
👉NIT
Born in Chongzhou, Sichuan Province in 1989; started creating with the "NIT" theme at the age of 15, using both English "NIT" and Chinese”气”.
The rotation of "NIT" and the visual structure of "QI" are the same. Under globalization, a Chinese person is seeking a three-dimensional path to understand who they are.
FREEMANN👉 Rome of Graffiti
Graffiti, whether in the contemporary art field or within their own culture, has long transcended simple visual expression and have become a vibrant carrier of dialogue based on street spirit and other cultures. Today, the inclusiveness and firmness of the subjectivity inherent in graffiti is just like a "Rome City’. • Just as the proverb on the Roman roads goes, "All roads lead to Rome", nowadays, the rebellious core and individualistic form language of graffiti keep emerging in various artworks from different cultural backgrounds. In this exhibition, "graffiti" is given interpretations that incorporate both Chinese and Western cultures. However, first and foremost, it is necessary to clearly distinguish the significant differences between "graffiti" in the Eastern and Western contexts. Traditionally, in the West, graffiti is the signature writing within street culture that embodies the rebellious spirit. It emphasizes that the "rebellion" in the streets is the active occupation of "public space" discourse rights by the "individual space”. " In the East, it is the "writing" of the scholar-official class’s rebellion against "Confucianism" emphasizing that the randomness of "writing" is the "mental learning" symbiosis between the body and the brush and ink in the present field. The key point of this exhibition is not the blind cultural blending, but rather allowing the traditions of "graffiti" in the East and the West to establish their own positions through collision. Just as Rome welcomed all roads leading to it, the "Rome" of graffiti lies in its respect for diverse traditions, and more importantly, in the emergence of new creative paths from the convergence points, making the “rebellious" "psychology" a current evidence connecting the past and the future cultures.
👉FREEMANN (Chu Sixian)
Born in Luzhou, Sichuan province in 1993. He graduated from the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, Italy with a B.A. in 2016. Then he studied for one year in the Department of Architecture at the Third University of Rome from 2017 to 2018. In 2019, he graduated from the Department of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, Italy with a M.F.A. Currently, he lives and works in Luzhou and Chengdu.
Chu Sixian’s work is dedicated to becoming a painter who builds courage for contemporary painting. He takes deviation as the core of my artistic thinking, shifting focus from merely achieving a final result to deeply exploring the process of painting itself. This approach breaks the inertia of conventional visual perception through deviation, allowing authentic personal differences to emerge - these differences hold the unique value of painting. Each deviation is not just a challenge to existing models but a process of self-discovery within the unconscious. This method transforms painting from a static result into a layered generative process, enabling viewers to experience an escape from fixed ways of seeing. Chu Sixian believes painting is not only an expression of visual beauty but a profound spiritual exploration. Through deviation and self-reconstruction, it reveals the redemptive potential of painting.
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